Marco and I have made travel and exploring the world a priority in our life for the past 18 years. We are often asked, why we travel so much, there isn’t one particular reason, but probably the two most important reasons are;
Firstly that we enjoy it!
Secondly we seem to thrive on that feeling of being out of our comfort zone.
Marco and I have now lived in the UK, Italy, India and Vietnam together, both of us mastered new languages during our time abroad. Our belief is that through travel you can educate yourself about the world and immersing yourself in other cultures, pushing your own beliefs and limitation by experiencing unfamiliar situations.
We have become very good at adapting to the country and culture we are experiencing at the time. This helps us stay open minded and humble. In short we feel travel is great form of education.
Our best travel memories have always been spontaneous and unplanned. We’ve had the most rewarding experiences when we were open-minded and willing to try new things.
Over the past 18 years, we’ve experienced all types of tourism and have realiased that responsible, sustainable, and slow travel must become the norm not only to preserve our natural environments but also local cultures and livelihoods.
I will admit that we haven’t always been conscious travellers, but have realised we must try harder and make an effort to be more mindful of our decisions during our travels. We need to be more aware of the impact our choices have on the environment and the people around us. By making small changes in the way we travel, we can reduce our carbon footprint and help make a difference to the local economy.
Around the world, we have spoken to local hotel owners and tour operators and there number one complaint is that the masses always choose the same popular destinations in a country. Which in turn means that the government spends money on the infrastructure to one particular area.
This means that huge swathes of other beautiful parts of a country are completely bypassed and missed. Which in the long term, creates a situations where one particular popular tourist destinations becomes too busy and smaller less popular destinations don’t receive any significant tourist footfall which then affects the local economy and livelihoods.
One way to improve tourism in a country is to persuade people to visit different, less popular destinations. This will help spread the tourism wealth more evenly throughout the country and expose people to new and exciting places to visit.
Going forward Sustainable Slow Travel
We all have a responsibility to do our bit, travelling in a more conscious and sustainable way, this starts with what destinations we choose and how we get there. Moving forward our aim is to promote sustainable tourism destinations and slow travel.
We urge you to be mindful when booking your next holiday, by choosing locally owned accomodation and booking any tours with local operators. Also when planning where to visit, try visiting a less well know part of the country. You will probably find you will be welcomed with open arms by the locals, it might be cheaper and less busy!